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Sir Stirling Moss is stepping back from the many and varied roles at which he has worked tirelessly over the years, be that an insouciant F1 pundit or ever-popular presence in the paddocks of the world’s great historic race meetings. His homepage now carries a message from Stirling’s son, and at the S&G we can only wish this fabulous knight and Lady Susie, their family and many friends the longest and most enjoyable days to come.

It is no great presumption to say that the scribes and regulars here at the S&G are numbered among those millions around the world united in admiration both for all that Sir Stirling achieved in his youth and all that he has brought us ever since.

Meeting real heroes does not often happen – if it happens, make sure that you’re wearing trousers. S&G.

Thank you, Sir Stirling, for being a hero par excellence. This is the statement from stirlingmoss.com

To all of his many friends and fans around the world, who use this website for regular updates, my father would like to announce that he will be closing it down.

Following his severe infections at the end of 2016 and his subsequent slow and arduous recovery, the decision has been made that, at the age of 88, the indefatigable man will finally retire, so that he and my mother can have some much deserved rest and spend more time with each other and the rest of the family.

The entire and extended Moss clan thank everyone for all their love and support over the years and we wish you all a happy and prosperous 2018.

Today in Montreal we shall see a great conspiracy unveiled like the maniacal plan of a James Bond villain – or in this case Bernie Ecclestone, for whom comparisons with a caricatured criminal mastermind are an occupational hazard.

The ingredients are all in place and one thing which can confidently be expected is that Heineken will announce the role it will play in Formula 1 from 2017 onwards – for the announcement will be the opening act of this year’s Canadian Grand Prix.

But there are also many fine old brands familiar to S&G regulars that are bobbing about on Bernie’s duck pond and about to form a nice neat row. For the time being, however, they’re doing a very good job of keeping themselves out of the spotlight until it’s time for the ‘big reveal’.

Heineken likes to present itself as a premium product. It conjures this image through an association with rugby and an 18-year partnership with the James Bond movie franchise. To this portfolio it will also be adding Formula 1.

The art of product placement: James Bond is offered a Heineken

At this point the conspiracy kicks in – and it’s a belter. As protagonists we have two of the marques favoured by Ian Fleming – namely Aston Martin and Alfa Romeo – we also have TAG Heuer watches and, to cap it all, we have ‘Ernst Stavro’ Mateschitz, the reclusive mastermind behind Red Bull who may or may not sit around in his alpine lodge stroking a white cat.

There is a degree of consensus that Heineken will be shovelling hundreds of millions of dollars into Bernie’s retirement fund and using its savvy at creating upmarket online adverts (that’s ‘content’ to those in the trade), to underline the message that its beer is sipped by men of wealth and taste.

Formula 1 is wilfully rubbish at ‘content’, so having someone else do it and pay handsomely for the privilege looks like another of Bernie’s brilliant deals.

But while hanging some banners on the Hangar Straight and Curva Grande is nice, and putting your logo in the corner of all F1’s youtube clips has a value, there is nothing quite like having your branding on the car that crosses the line first. Just ask Red Bull.

(Not) seen inside the Red Bull headquarters, yesterday.

The Austrian energy drink firm currently owns the commercial rights to the FIA World Rally Championship, drawing viewers onto Red Bull’s TV channels and websites while also selling footage to broadcasters the world over. Its logo can be seen on inflatable gantries and mud-spattered hoardings along the route but just in case that’s all a bit subtle Red Bull is also the sponsor of Volkswagen Motorsport, which wins everything.

So does this mean that Heineken is following suit and sponsoring the winning team? No… but there is a link to one particular motor manufacturer and James Bond affiliated brand that is currently dabbling in Grand Prix racing: Aston Martin.

Aston Martin made its name in motor sport – here at the 1922 Grand Prix

This year, the Red Bull Racing F1 team (them again!) joined forces with Aston in an ‘innovation partnership’ (a phrase beloved of those who create ‘content’). What Aston brings to the party is a bit of a mystery as Red Bull’s engines are made by Renault and funded by the TAG Heuer watch company, resulting in a pair of Red Bull TAG Heuers on the grid which are innovatively partnered with Newport Pagnell’s finest.

Presumably it all makes sense to someone out there.

Meanwhile our fellow WordPress dweller, F1 insider and all-round decent egg Joe Saward was presented with a 007 baseball cap by Aston Martin and instructed to wear it in Montreal this weekend. So we have the trinity of Heineken, Aston Martin and James Bond uniting in a city full of beautiful women during a Formula 1 weekend and Joe’s clearly invited to the party.

All of this is intriguing enough but then we also have another S&G regular – and James Bond icon – barrelling into the frame: Alfa Romeo.

Nuvolari raced Alfas with Ferrari badges. Now the situation is reversed.

Alfa is of course under the Fiat Chrysler banner and a close relation of Ferrari, which ran the elder firm’s racing programme from 1933-38. Sporting success has been a bit thin on the ground since 1951 (touring cars aside), but Alfa remains the romantic’s alternative to German executive cars and it has also provided many of the vehicles in which James Bond blows up villainous henchmen in recent films.

Now, however, Fiat and Ferrari CEO Sergio Marchionne has said that he wants Alfa Romeo back at the sharp end of motorsport. He came close to negotiating a deal with Red Bull to run Alfa Romeo-branded Ferrari engines last year and the Alfa badge is now resplendent upon the flanks of Ferrari’s Formula 1 cars.

Marchionne’s eagerness to bring Alfa back to Formula 1 could also be helpful for ‘Enrst Stavro’ Mateschitz, who not only owns the World Rally Championship, a broadcast network and a Formula 1 team with TAG Heuer branded Renault engines but also Scuderia Toro Rosso – a second Formula 1 team which, having formerly been Minardi, is based at Faenza, a stone’s throw from Maranello.

It seems that Mateschitz feels that two Formula 1 teams might be a little excessive in the current economic climate and is keen to sell his Italian stable at the right price. To Aston Martin? To Alfa Romeo? To Heineken? To Joe Saward? It’s a mystery worthy of Fleming’s finest.

And then, for the final layer on this cake of conundrums, we have James Bond himself. A new film is in the offing and there may well be a new actor playing the hero of the franchise because Daniel Craig has grown jaded with blowing up Alfa Romeos full of henchmen, rolling around with luxuriously upholstered Latin women and crashing Aston Martins. He wants to spend more time at home with the missus… and when the lady in question is Rachel Weisz it’s an understandable argument.

Aston Martin and Alfa Romeo have been 007 mainstays of late

The last four Bond films were a cycle and a fresh start beckons. Something called a Tom Higgledypiggledy is apparently the hot tip for the job, having starred in an adaptation of a spy novel by John le Carré which involved him rolling around in a bathroom with a beautiful woman. There is also a new James Bond novel which features a fictitious 1957 Formula 1 season… an idea that the S&G once suggested in no uncertain terms to the Bond estate. The swine.

So where does all of this leave us? Heineken is making an announcement, Aston Martin has handed out the invites, Red Bull is everywhere and Alfa Romeo wants in. Perhaps a new James Bond will be announced and the new movie will feature him in a Heineken green Red Bull-Aston Martin blowing up henchmen one at a time in a fleet of Minardi-Alfas.

The plot is a bit convoluted and could do with a decent script editor but the good news for S&G regulars is that one way or another two of the most valued marques in motor sport history could yet be preparing their return to the fray – and we’ll all raise a bottle of Heineken to that.

“James Bond flung the DBIII through the last mile of straight, did a racing change down into third and then into second for the short hill before the inevitable crawl through Rochester. Leashed in by the velvet claw of the front discs, the engine muttered its protest with a mild back-popple from the twin exhausts…”

Could this have been the view intended for Bond?

There never was a DBIII road car, and we can be fairly certain that Fleming never got his hands on a DB3s sports prototype, but this moniker was often informally given to owners of the DB2/4 series in the mid-Fifties.

Last year, headlines were made when Coys announced that it had the Aston that had inspired Fleming consigned for its Blenheim Palace sale. The car in question was a DB 2/4 Mk I Vantage, chassis number LML-819, was delivered new on 4 July 1955 to the Honorable Sqdr. Ldr. Phillip Ingram Cunliffe-Lister, DSO.

Just like Donald Healey before him, Cunliffe-Lister had been a wartime pilot – albeit in WW2, rather than WW1. He had flown Spitfires with Fighter Command and, later, joined 1409 Flight to gather meteorological information for Bomber Command and the USAAF in the twin-engined Mosquito. In July 1943 Cunliffe-Lister had been taken POW after he, along with Pilot Officer Pat Kernon, had taken off from RAF Oakington in Mosquito IX LR502 on a met flight over Holland.

A 1409 Flight Mosquito Mk.IX on ops around D-Day, 1944

The aircraft ran out of fuel following a navigational error, but Cunliffe-Lister got the aircraft down and managed to evade capture for four days. Eventually the airmen were rounded up and sent to a transit camp for Air Force Prisoners of War before going to Stalag Luft 3 at Sagan, where he remained until his peacetime repatriation.

It seems that the former pilot found civilian life something of a trial, leaving his wartime bride and children in 1947 and remarrying soon after while taking part in international rallies as a means to find the adrenaline rush he clearly craved. A decade later, Cunliffe-Lister took delivery of the latest source of excitement in his life: a gunmetal grey Aston Martin.

While there is no record that Cunliffe-Lister and Fleming ever knew each other, both of their fathers had been close friends of Winston Churchill. Cunliffe-Lister’s father, Lord Swinton, was also head of MI5 during the Second World War while Fleming had been the bright young star of Royal Navy Intelligence. It has even been suggested the character of M may have been owed more than a little to Lord Swinton.

Fleming at his desk in Goldeneye – concocting another thriller

So far so tenuous, but Cunliffe-Lister used to go on regular trips to see the Royal portrait painter Dennis Ramsay and his wife Rose at Hope Bay Studio, the house next to Fleming’s in St Margaret’s Bay near Deal, Kent.

It is of note that Fleming used Hope Bay Studio as the inspiration for his character Hugo Drax’s property where he kept a rocket in the novel Moonraker. Doubtless he would therefore have taken note of the rather beautiful motor car outside, and his interest would have been still further piqued by its rather unique specification.

The Cunliffe-Lister Aston pictured on its return to Deal in 2014

This was no ordinary DB2/4: it had reinforced steel bumpers, concealed lockers, a heavy-duty anti-interference ignition system, driver’s seat connections for two-way radio and a Halda Speed Pilot… gadgets which bear a passing resemblance to those on Bond’s car in Goldfinger.

“… the DBIII had… certain extras which might or might not come in handy. These included switches to alter the type and colour of Bond’s front and rear lights if he was following or being followed at night, reinforced steel bumpers, fore and aft, in case he needed to ram, a long-barrelled Colt .45 in a trick compartment under the driver’s seat, a radio pick-up tuned to receive an apparatus called the Homer, and plenty of concealed space that would fox most Customs men.”

Everything that the well turned-out spy might require

Much of the real Aston Martin’s history is as mysterious as anything that Fleming ever conceived. Philip Cunliffe-Lister committed suicide in 1956, and the car changed hands – and colours – several times before it was seemingly parked in a shed and forgotten about for many years.

A local engineer who had worked on Channel hovercraft eventually heard about the car and bought it as a father-and-son restoration project. As soon as they set to work on the car they realised that this was no ordinary Aston. Fortunately, their craftsmanship on the restoration coincided with much of the background on the Cunliffe-Lister family history in espionage coming to light at the end of the 50-year rule, which put a few jigsaw pieces in place.

Under the gavel: the Goldfinger Aston Martin awaits its fate

The valuation and sale did raise some interesting questions. This was an amateur restoration of a basket case that had no significant competition history, whose first owner had some unproven links to Ian Fleming and wartime espionage and parked outside a house he once wrote about. As far as provenance goes, this was all rather new territory.

Surprisingly the car didn’t sell but afterwards it did elicit an offer of more than £275,000 from an interested party – a healthy 150 per cent premium compared to a similar car in standard trim. Whether or not it was sold remains a mystery – one that will doubtless be continued the next time LML-819 is consigned for auction.

Some people have a passion for a particular rock band or author, others for an aeroplane or yacht. Graham Poulton’s passion is Aston Martin, and he lavishes it upon replicating the finest of GT cars as 1/32 models for static display or high end slot cars.

The DP214 in all its (miniature) glory

The devil is in the detail when it comes to miniaturisation. Aston Martins are somewhere between two and ten a penny in the model making world because, as beautiful things, lots of people want them. But Graham’s keen eye wouldn’t rest until there was something spot-on, which led him down the path to whittling and crafting his way towards perfection.

That doesn’t just mean the bodywork, by the way. Exact replicas of the unique Aston Martin wire wheels are available and Graham has even colour matched his own paint – although Ford Forest Green from Halfords will often suffice.

Now you too can own one of Graham’s little masterpieces. They are available in kit form – and even a halfwit could make a decent fist of them. Alternatively, GP has been known to turn out fully-finished models to order. They’re well worth the asking price, especially when you look at what is being charged for mass-produced and inaccurate die-casts these days.

Upcoming models include the DB5 in various guises and even some other non-Aston models. Already available are the DB4GT, DP214, DB4 GT Zagato and – oh, blasphemy! – a Ferrari 250 GT SWB.

Graham’s kits are user-friendly and take only enthusiasm to get right

So why not head on over to GP-Miniatures to drool awhile, then get your chequebook out and have one of these magnificent little beasts in your life?

With all the hubbub about James Bond that inevitably surrounds a new movie, the S&G can report that it is probably Daniel Craig’s finest hour. Not since Goldeneye has there been such a shameless parade of 007 iconography laid out in return for the entry fee, but it was sufficient to make beautiful women whoop with glee – something for which Ian Fleming would undoubtedly be thankful.

He would also doubtless be thankful for the high calibre of the car chase in Spectre, which is set in Rome’s rather claustrophobic, cobbled night time streets and featuring two visions of British-built loveliness, the stillborn Jaguar C-X75 hybrid and Aston Martin DB10.

A licence to squeal: the ladies like a good car chase in Bond’s latest, Spectre

Cars were a major feature of Fleming’s life and work, and became such as early as July 1932 when, as a junior reporter for Reuters, he was dispatched to Munich for his first piece of overseas reportage.

The deal was that Fleming would act as navigator on the International Alpine Trial for a rather useful driver and WW1 pilot called Donald Healey, winner of the 1931 Monte Carlo Rally at the wheel of his 4½-litre Invicta. Fleming would write up the story to cast Invicta, and British motoring generally, in a favourable light while reporting upon one of the growing number of motoring events that had caught the public imagination.

Healey and his crew celebrate winning the 1931 Monte with their Invicta

The event was extremely popular both with young British men and the burgeoning sports car manufacturers such as Riley, Sunbeam and Singer – all of whom were seeking to recreate the sort of fame and success enjoyed by the ‘Bentley Boys’ at Le Mans. Among the competitors in 1932 was a youthful Dick Seaman in the MG Magna that was normally his runabout at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Like Seaman and the other British contenders, Healey and Fleming drove 700 miles from London to Munich, crossing the Channel on the SS Forde before an overnight halt in Reims, then stopping in Freudenstadt in the Black Forest after a second day’s hard motoring.

They arrived in Munich in time for a torch lit parade before the start, which was held in torrential rain. Healey’s skill and the Invicta’s prowess catapulted them into the lead of the event, in front of continental ‘crack’ entries from the factories of Mercedes, Lancia and Bugatti to name but three.

Just months after joining Reuters on an unsalaried trial and being apprenticed by such tiresome work as updating obituaries, the whole event must have come as manna from heaven to the 23-year-old Fleming. Here he was among like-minded chaps, savouring the whiff of Castrol R and Healey’s furious working of throttle and gears at first hand.

Future hero Seaman apace in his Magna

The Alpine Trial lasted a week and criss-crossed the borders of Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland and France on a route of 1580 miles. Healey was on brilliant form, setting the outright fastest time and a new record of 23 minutes 44 seconds for climbing the fabled Stelvio Pass, ending that day with a night at the Grand Hotel in St. Moritz – exactly the sort of excitements that Fleming would later give to James Bond.

At the end of the event, Healey would be awarded the Coupe des Glaciers for having completed the event with zero penalty points. The big Invicta did not carry off the outright honours and found itself swamped by hordes of smaller capacity cars on the final run to Grenoble – much to Fleming’s bemusement. It was reported in The Autocar magazine that this rather self-assured young navigator was to be found chastising the impudent little cars, demanding to know “What on earth are you doing among the grown-ups?”

Fleming filed his copy and parted ways with Healey – the former heading off into the arms of his Swiss paramour, Monique Panchaud de Bottomes, while Healey took in the Swiss Automobile Club’s annual hillclimb, finishing second.

Monique Panchaud de Bottomes and Ian Fleming in Switzerland, 1931

While the young gentlemen enjoyed their sport, there was a small hubbub at home because, contrary to the story reported by Fleming and carried by The Daily Telegraph, it had not been a British victory on the event. Fleming’s editor called him to demand an explanation, to which came the reply that this was not a competition measured in first-past-the-post speed but in skill and bravery, at which the British contingent had won hands-down.

Remarkably, this explanation sufficed!

The impact of this odyssey was, of course, to be profound. It was the sort of drive that James Bond would later take, carrying millions of readers alongside him to experience the growl of two-inch exhaust pipes, to share the enjoyment of racing gearchanges and to learn the finer points of supercharging and back-axle ratios. It is also notable that Bond’s mother was called Monique and she was from Vaud in Switzerland.

Life for Donald Healey, meanwhile, would see him step back from competition driving and into the vanguard of British sports car designers, starting with Triumph. After working on the production of aero engines and armoured cars during World War 2, the Donald Healey Motor Company was formed in 1945, producing his own cars and in partnership with Nash and, most famously of all, with Austin.

Donald Healey in later life with one of his celebrated creations

Thoughts at the S&G have turned to Fleming of late for reasons other than James Bond. More than 50 years ago now, that most unfettered imperialist gave his verdict on America’s rise to superpower status. As a nation, he declared, they were: “Totally unprepared to rule the world that is now theirs.”

In recent weeks, the behaviour of great swathes of Americans in the face of the Islamic death cult Daesh has hammered Fleming’s words home. Not least when that buffoon Donald Trump, stalking horse for the White House in 2016, suggested launching nuclear warheads at the barren desert of Daesh territory in Syria and Iraq – to rapturous applause: “I don’t know if sand can glow in the dark,” he said. “But we’re going to find out.”

The website of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Sarasota is not the first place one would think of looking at when seeking out members of the rip-roaring Grand Prix racing community of the 1950s.

And yet here is a profile of a trustee of the church who is in charge of Sunday Services; who rounds up ushers and greeters for duty every Sunday morning and hosts a monthly discussion group about movies. Not very F1, perhaps, but the photograph of a twinkly-eyed lady with an elfin haircut gives the game away… this is indeed the widow of that great British racer, Peter Collins.

The story of Peter Collins is too rarely retold. This dashing young man with the carefree approach to life cut a swathe through the racing scene in the 1950s alongside such contemporaries as Sir Stirling Moss, Tony Brooks and Roy Salvadori – although he is best remembered for his symbiotic partnership with Mike Hawthorn in which each christened the other ‘mon ami mate’.

Born in Kidderminster in 1931, Collins’ father owned a garage and a haulage company, and to no great surprise young Peter developed an affinity for mechanical things very early on. As a teenager he thrived in the rough and tumble of 500cc racing on abandoned airfields alongside the likes of Moss and a certain Bernard Ecclestone.

The rakish young Collins gets ready for action

At a party hosted by the great pre-war lady racer Kay Petre in 1951, Collins managed to inveigle himself with the Aston Martin sports car team boss, John Wyer, and earned a test drive. On the appointed day at Silverstone not only was Aston present but also the HWM Formula 2 team – and by the time the teams were packing up to go home, Collins had a contract with both!

Throughout the first half of the 1950s Collins was a stalwart performer for the Aston Martin team in endurance racing and rallies. He also kept trying to break into Formula One with the British teams BRM and Vanwall but without great success, while first Hawthorn then Moss took the Grand Prix world by storm.

Finally Collins got his big chance when Moss requested that his old 500cc sparring partner be drafted in by Mercedes-Benz to partner him in the 1955 Targa Florio. They won the race and Collins found himself signing a contract for 1956 with none other than Enzo Ferrari.

Formula One drivers were expected to compete elsewhere, which meant that Collins’ first landmark result with the Scuderia came not at a grand prix but with second place on the Mille Miglia. Nevertheless this was swiftly followed by victories in both the Belgian and French Grands Prix, and these early days earned him the unstinting admiration of the ‘Old Man’, devastated by the untimely death of his son, Dino, and who turned to Collins for solace, treating him as a member of the family.

Ferrari holds court with Collins (r), Musso (l) and Castelotti

Meanwhile those mid-season victories ensured that the championship boiled down to a two-way fight between Collins and his three-time world champion team-mate Juan Manuel Fangio. At the final round, the Italian Grand Prix, Fangio’s car suffered a steering failure and left Collins with a clear run to the title – only for the young Englishman to voluntarily pull in and give his car to the older man, whose second place finish sealed his fourth title.

“It’s too early for me to become world champion – I’m too young,” Collins said afterwards. “I want to go on enjoying life and racing, but if I become world champion now I would have all the obligations that go with it. And Fangio deserves it anyway!”

This was astonishing behaviour, even by the more sportsmanlike days of the 1950s. As even Fangio admitted later, if the position had been reversed, nothing on Earth would have persuaded him to get out of that car.

Yet Collins was happy and after the clamour of his first season at Ferrari came the enjoyment of some leisure time. Each winter the drivers kept themselves busy – and earning money – with off-season appearances in the Americas and at the Nassau Speed Week. They also pursued their other great interest in life – women. It was in January 1957 that Stirling Moss told Collins about a beautiful girl he knew in Miami who loved grand prix racing – an actress called Louise King – and gave his old pal her number if he was at a loose end while in the States.

As close off the track as on it: Collins leads Moss at Silverstone, 1956

In fact Collins had met Louise at Monaco the previous year. Evidently this fact slipped his mind as he stood waiting for his ‘blind date’ at the Coconut Grove Playhouse bar and got talking to a bright young thing – who turned out to be the very girl he was waiting for all along. Not only did Collins get away with this gaffe, it was the start of something special.

As you can doubtless tell, Louise was no ordinary girl. The 24-year-old beauty was starring in the Broadway production of The Seven Year Itch alongside Tom Ewell, the star of the movie adaptation alongside Marilyn Monroe. The independent daughter of a distinguished diplomat, not only did the young divorcee willingly spurn Hollywood’s advances, but she was also an Austin-Healey driving member of the Sports Car Club of America with a passion for motor racing. It’s hardly surprising that Collins was besotted.

Collins and Louise relax by the pool between races

Two days after their first date, Louise lay next to Collins beside his hotel pool in Miami. It was at this moment that, whispering so that his friend, the American driver Masten Gregory, didn’t overhear, that Collins proposed – and Louise accepted. They were married the following Monday, to widespread disbelief.

Although Louise’s father was quickly won over by Collins’s natural charm, his own parents were appalled by the prospect of their beloved son marrying an actress, never mind that she was already once divorced and, as the last straw, an American.

His friends in the motor racing set however were astonished that Collins, a legendary swordsman, was seemingly going to turn down the pleasures of the many available – and occasionally unavailable – women with whom he had previously wiled away the hours. There was, by general consensus, more chance of Moss joining a monastery or Hawthorn going teetotal.

Few in the paddock believed Collins could adapt to domestic bliss

It was also widely expected that Enzo Ferrari would take this turn of events worst of all. He had lavished Collins with a paternal care in an era when drivers took lives in their hands on every lap and it was assumed that Ferrari would feel that a man with priorities off the track was never going to give him 100% commitment – but in fact the reverse was true.

The newlyweds were made welcome by Ferrari and his wife, Laura, who insisted on accompanying the glamorous new girl on every shopping trip and lunch date despite her complete lack of English and Louise’s equal lack of Italian. Initially they took a room in the old farmhouse above the Cavallino restaurant, but that summer they were gifted the use of an old villa on the factory grounds which had lain empty since the war.

For 1957 Fangio chose to rejoin his friends at Maserati and, when Eugenio Castelotti was killed in pre-season testing, Collins was the established star. He was teamed with the returning Mike Hawthorn, Italian driver Luigi Musso and Spanish nobleman Alfonso de Portago but it was to be a dismal season.

A publicity picture taken before the start of the fateful 1957 Mille Miglia

The greatest pall hung after the death of ‘Fon’ de Portago, together with his co-driver Ed Nelson and 10 spectators, in a crash on the Mille Miglia. The race continued, of course, with Collins leading for much of it until the transmission failed 130 miles from the finish. Recalling that night in Chris Nixon’s seminal book Mon Ami Mate, Louise said of Portago’s loss:

“…it was almost as though they expected it and although he was a very popular guy no-one could get upset about it. That night a group of us went out to to a restaurant and after dinner we danced the night away. We didn’t set out to go dancing. It was just a regular part of the evening at that restaurant and it provided a sense of release for us after the race.”

Death was an ever-present part of life as a racing driver, and therefore of life as a racing driver’s wife. The Collinses and the rest of the sport moved on, and in Formula One the most memorable grand prix of the season came in Germany, when Hawthorn and Collins, lapping together, managed to get beaten by Fangio, who put in the drive of his life to regain a 40 second deficit.

“I motioned Peter to come alongside and pointed behind us with thumb down to indicate that Fangio seemed to be in trouble,” Hawthorn later recounted in his book, Challenge Me The Race.

“He nodded, put his thumb up, then pointed to me with one finger and then back to himself with two. He wanted me to win and was prepared to come second himself, which I thought was a very sporting gesture…”

Fangio has passed Collins and tracks Hawthorn, 1957 German GP

It was also a plan doomed to failure, brought about by Fangio’s last and most celebrated victory. Yet increasingly Collins’s attention was not on his sport. He was planning to build an ‘American-style’ home in England, to invest in the new Austin-Healey factory in Nassau and to opening a Ferrari dealership with his father. He also wanted children, and his aims for family life began to preoccupy him as the 1958 season loomed.

After the disappointing Lancia-derived 801 of 1957, the new Ferrari 246 Dino held plenty of promise. Yet in the opening rounds of 1958 Collins was off the pace next to Hawthorn and Musso. When, in April, he and Louise left Maranello to live instead on their yacht Mipooka, moored in Monaco, Enzo Ferrari was cut to the core by what he perceived to be treachery.

Louise at home aboard their yacht, the Mipooka, to Ferrari’s chagrin

At Le Mans for the 24 Hours, Collins shared a new Testarossa with Hawthorn, who joked that racing for so long was no fun and that they should break the car in time to be back in England for Sunday lunch. When the clutch overheated, Collins was forced to retire and Hawthorn’s prophecy came true – while the team was able to drive the ‘broken’ car back to the pits once the clutch had cooled sufficiently.

All this was fuel on the fires of intrigue at Maranello, and an enraged Enzo Ferrari turned to Musso as the stick with which to beat the ungrateful young Englishman.

Collins at speed in the 1958 British GP – his last victory

Both Collins and Musso retired from the Belgian Grand Prix but in France it seemed that Musso was thoroughly wound-up to win at any cost. Ferrari initially forbade Collins from driving in the main race but later relented. Nevertheless Reims was a circuit on which the lionhearted Hawthorn thrived and he claimed victory for the Scuderia while the tragic Musso crashed fatally while trying to keep up.

The British Grand Prix saw the return of the old Peter Collins. Perhaps inspired by Ferrari’s attempt to drop him from in France, he was simply unbeatable despite the presence of both Hawthorn and the Vanwall of Stirling Moss… with much talk of the 1959 season, it seemed that Collins was now firmly back in the saddle at Ferrari.

To the victor, the spoils: Hawthorn and Collins celebrate Silverstone success

The next stop was the Nürburgring one week later for the German Grand Prix. Initially Moss led but his Vanwall’s magneto broke, leaving Hawthorn and Collins out in front from a charging Tony Brooks in the second Vanwall, who duly caught and passed them.

Determined not to be caught napping twice at the ‘Ring, the two Ferraris fought back but at Pflanzgarten Collins ran wide, hit the earth bank and was catapulted from his car as it somersaulted through the air. He was thrown head-first into a tree and did not survive the journey to hospital.

Louise’s 18-month fairytale ended as abruptly as it started. The Collins family lost no time in getting her to sign over any claim to her late husband’s estate and, in the depths of mourning, her friend Peter Ustinov scooped her up and put her on tour with him in Romanoff and Juliet as a distraction while ‘mon ami mate’ Hawthorn raced on to claim the world championship.

Louise still delights that, in Marilyn’s arms, Tom Ewell’s eyes are on her!

By 1959 she was back in America and back in the spotlight, becoming a regular on TV staples What’s My Line and the Today show. Eventually she stepped away from showbiz, finding new avenues as a real estate broker in New York City and Connecticut before retiring to Florida almost 20 years ago.

It seems unfair that so rich and varied a life as that of Louise King can be so defined on this blog by 18 months spent as the wife of a racing driver. And yet perhaps not. For her part, Louise remains staunchly proud of the life she shared with Peter Collins, the man she still describes as ‘the great love of my life’.

This summer will mark the 55th anniversary of that fateful German Grand Prix, and doubtless there will be many heartfelt prayers said in a certain church in a corner of Florida. And we should raise a glass to the brief, bright lives of the two ‘mon ami mates’ and the ongoing good health of their ‘mon ami matess’, Louise King.